September 18, 2002	Wednesday	Rajab 10, 1423

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UNITED NATIONS, Sept 17: Iraq, under intense worldwide pressure, agreed to allow UN weapons inspectors back into the country without conditions after almost four years, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced on Monday.

President Bush in his speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday put the international community on notice seeking action in effect telling it that the US was willing to go it alone if it failed to act.

Annan, told reporters that Iraqi Foreign Minister, Naji Sabri, had given him a letter confirming Baghdad’s offer.

The letter, which would now be distributed to the 15-member UN Security Council, also said Baghdad was ready for immediate talks about practical arrangements for the arms experts’ return, Annan said.

“I can confirm to you that I have received a letter from the Iraqi authorities conveying their decision to allow the return of the inspectors without conditions,” Annan told reporters.

Since March, Iraq had insisted on conditions for the return of the inspectors, beginning with an end to “no-fly” zones patrolled by US and British planes and the lifting of UN sanctions, imposed when Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

Annan said he believed President George W. Bush’s speech “galvanized the international community” with nearly every speaker at the UN General Assembly session urging Baghdad to accept the return of the inspectors.

Bush put the heat on Iraq last Thursday when he told the assembly that Iraq was undermining the international organization’s credibility by violating 16 Security Council resolutions.

Accounting for Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and ballistic missile programmes is key to lifting the sanctions and was a UN and US demand after the 1991 Gulf War.

Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, has about 60 staff at UN headquarters, and can draw on some of them to go to Iraq soon, his spokesman Ewen Buchanan said.

However, it will take longer to get a full complement of inspectors, who are drawn from 44 countries around the world, on the ground.